What Are The Best Affiliate Programs For Beginners?

Affiliate programs, they’re our source of income and the bloodline of our online businesses. You can’t be an affiliate without joining an affiliate program, so there’s no avoiding them.

So in light of that, today we’ll be specifically going over affiliate programs for beginners. So if you’re a veteran looking for some additional programs no one in the game has never heard of, this isn’t for you.

This is a guru free zone!

So no worries, I’ll keep it simple and try my best to explain which programs are worth pursuing and how they’re set up, along with some additional info. for those of you who want to take some action.

Now that might not seem like a massive list, but trust for those of you just starting out these are AMAZING programs to start with.

They offer a wide variety of products and services to promote and together are both leading industries in their respective niche making them trusted and reputable for their affiliates.

And no these aren’t affiliate links and nor am I getting paid to promote these programs, I feel most bloggers out there trade quality material for a few dollars and I don’t believe in that.

So with that being said lets get into it…

Note: Feel free to grab a pen and pencil to take notes or pin this page for reference if you decide to sign up.

What Are The Best Affiliate Programs For beginners?

1. Amazon Associates

Personally one of my absolute favorite affiliate programs out there is Amazon’s affiliate program, Amazon Associates.

Over the past decade Amazon has established themselves as an online super giant leading the world as the largest e-commerce store on the internet today.

The thing I love about Amazon and their affiliate program is their simplicity.

From a quick sign up process to an easy affiliate program to navigate they really are the optimal choice for my readers just starting out.

You don’t have to be some top super site to get into their program. Just have a site, a domain, and agree to stay withing their guidelines and you should have no problem getting accepted.

On top of this there are also some added benefits to being an Amazon Associate member.

For one, it’s free to sign up.

They offer one of the easiest and most massive product promotion selection out there. Over 200 million products to be exact, and that’s in the U.S. alone!

They’re a trusted brand among consumers.

They offer some of the highest conversion rates out there.

But like anything there are some cons that come along with it:

They’re commission rate isn’t the highest out there.

To really see a real source of income coming in you’ll need to promote either higher priced products or have a large amount of sales coming in each month.

Going Over The Pro’s And con’s

Now I’m not going to leave you hanging with just a simple pro’s and con’s list, but I’ll try to keep it as short and sweet as possible to keep you from getting bored to death.

Signing up

Like I mentioned above the sign up process is pretty painless. You’ll just need to sign up with an e-mail and password, and start the application process.

From here you’ll just be asked some simple questions and provide some needed information.

Questions like:

What niche is your site in?

What kind of products do you intend to promote?

How new or old is your site?

What platforms do you use to market your business?

Nothing to advanced, just some basic questions so Amazon can familiarize themselves with you and your site.

And then you’ll need some additional information such as a tax information and payment preference so Amazon can pay you.

Promotion Opportunities

Nothing really gets better option wise then Amazon when it comes to what products to promote. If it’s sold on Amazon you have the opportunity to promote it!

If you’re niche is electronics, dance, health, fitness, toys, clothing, beauty products, whatever it is Amazon most likely has it.

They also make it incredibly easy for beginners to promote, just search in the search bar they provide, find the product, grab the link, and insert into your site. That simple!

Here’s a little example of this:

That’s over 48,000 available products to promote, just for Gaming Headsets alone! So as you can see the opportunities here really are limitless.

Being a trusted brand

Many would ask why this would be important when promoting products? I mean you’re not the customer right, you’re just promoting, how can this possibly affect you?

Simple:

“If there’s no buyer trust, they’re not going to buy.”

Then what is that going to do about your commission? $0/10% is still $0, and that’s exactly what you’ll be earning if your readers don’t trust the sellers you promote.

Would you have the trust to buy something from an online store of retailer you’ve never heard of before? How are you going to know they’re trustworthy?

With online fraud being so common these days people are deterred by almost anything, being why big names like Amazon do so well, they have the trust buyers need and the track record to back it up.

High Conversion Rates

Something that’s absolutely astounding about Amazon is their conversion rate, an incredible 74%!

In some cases all you have to do is get your reader to Amazon and they’ll do the rest. Another awesome thing is that once you refer the customer whatever they buy you get a commission.

That’s right, whatever they buy! You can refer a reader for a pair of headphones and they wind up buying a flat screen TV, you get the commission for the TV also!

With every product a customer views or purchases Amazon is always giving additional references to other products, it’s like a conversion machine!

Commissions rates and Income

A common complaint among Amazon Affiliate members is the commission rate, usually ranging anywhere from 4 – 8%, and sometimes higher for those bringing in a large amount of sales.

Unless you have a large quantity of sales coming in you won’t see much benefit from these lower priced products leaving most members to promote higher priced products.

Now this isn’t bad for the more seasoned online marketer, but for those just starting off it can be a little difficult to convince someone into buying a $1,000 laptop then it is to buy a $7 pair of headphones.

But with every sale you get your commission rate per product will gradually increase, so if you really bare down and get at it, it wouldn’t be any shock you should be earning a full time income from Amazon alone.

Additional Info.

If you think Amazon’s affiliate program is worth a shot, I wrote an in-depth article on the whole process from signing up to getting paid for those of you who want a helping hand in the process. Check it out here- Amazon Associates Review| How profitable is it?

Note: If you have any questions just drop a comment here or in the article above and I’ll see what I can do:)

2. ClickBank

Unlike Amazon primarily selling physical products, ClickBank is purely digital. So much in fact that they are the leading affiliate marketing network for digital products.

They’re essentially a huge database that sellers “vendors” go to advertise their products for affiliates to promote, if it’s good and pays well, they get a promotion, we get a commission, they get a sale, everyone wins.

Promoting things such as:

Online programs

E-books

Digital Products

Software

Along with digital products ClickBank doesn’t limit themselves to one specific niche.

Although they don’t directly promote physical products, they do have a large database of seller’s sales pages you can link to and in turn make a profit with every purchase made through your link.

Besides their credible database, I recommend ClickBank primarily on a few factors:

Has an easy enrollment process

Offer helpful tools to make navigating the marketplace easier

Has wide range of commissions ranging from 1 – 75%

They can be a great source of residual income.

But they’re program does come with a flaw I’m not particularly fond of.

Their program unfortunately, due to it’s large marketplace has attracted some sour apples. Scam sites do pop up every once in a while and make you second guess if the product you’re promoting really is legit.

It’s nothing a little due dillagence and some research can’t handle, but is a popular complaint within ClickBank.

Knowing the characteristics of a scam can pay off in the long run, so do yourself a favor and get familiar.

Going Over The Pro’s And Con’s

Now lets get a little more familiar with what makes this program great along with its downside. Like anything it can’t be perfect but it does help to know why.

Note: Like the description above (Amazon Associates), if you wanna skip pass the milk and get straight to the meat and get started, just click here- ClickBank Affiliate Review

Enrollment Process

Getting enrolled in ClickBank’s program is about as easy as it gets.

You’ll just need to provide the basics, things like:

An email and password for your account

Some basic information about your website

What niche you’re in

What products you intend to promote

URL

Your preferred payment method, direct deposit, check, etc.

And a short description explaining your site and your ability to promote their products.

Nothing to difficult, the process can be done in a matter of minutes, just have a domain made, a site set up (doesn’t have to be anything fancy), and what direction you’re going in, and you’ll be fine.

Navigating the Marketplace

Once you join ClickBank you’re going to have to get familiar with their database of digital products called the marketplace. But no worries I got you covered.

All it is, is a giant database full of digital products that you can search for. Along with this database comes some very helpful tools you can use to narrow down your searches.

Just to give you a perspective of how huge it really is, here’s a little search just using the word “Affiliate” and look what it turned up:

Now look in the upper right corner (highlighted in grey), Displaying 1 -10 out of 2,901.

That’s almost 3,000 results for one simple search, so yea I really meant it when I say huge.

Now it’ll be almost impossible to navigate through all these products, so ClickBank offers some nifty little tools to sort through the masses.

You can narrow down your searches based on:

Product Types

Shippable media- Products that can be shipped

Pitch Plus- Has Up-sells

Language preference

German

English

Spanish

French

Portuguese

Billing types

One Time- Product is a one time payment, no further billing or Up-sells

They’re a great community of like minded people all striving towards one goal, all specializing in Affiliate Marketing. We train, help, chat, and guide newbies looking to start off in online business.

They taught me everything I needed to know to start some of my first online businesses (even this one here!). No one starts off an expert but it does help to have a great community of people behind you helping you there.

So if you’re curious and want to know more, just click the little link above or the nifty little banner below to take you there.

Until next time,

P.S. We have a serious Taco Bell addiction and the affiliate links on our site lets us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

About The Author

Tyler

An ex-broke college student turned online business owner, Tyler is a regular poster on Broke College Solutions. Usually taking a more creative approach to making money while in college he is our go-to guy for making money online.